Posts (RSS)Ohio Foreclosure Listings Push Down Home Prices
The case of a retired Ohio professor unable to sell his house after over two years of competing with foreclosure listings indicates how low the Ohio housing market has gone down because of continued Ohio foreclosures.
Based on a report by the Ohio Association of Realtors, home sales in January in Ohio has gone down by 21.3 percent to 3,527 units from total sales of 4,482 units in January 2008. Because of thousands of homes in foreclosure listings, the average home sale price for January has gone down to $115,326, a decrease of 11.9 percent from the average sale price in January 2008.
Similarly, the housing market in Mansfield has been battered by foreclosure listings, with only 72 units sold in January. This represented an 8.9 percent drop from total sales in January 2008. The average sale price was $66,765, a drastic 21.5 percent fall from the average price in January 2008.
Ralph Hunt, the professor who has retired from full-time teaching at the Ohio State University in Mansfield, has been selling his Tudor-style two-story home for around $170,000. He bought the house seven years ago for about $129,000.
Thinking that he can sell immediately his Mansfield house, he bought a new house near Akron where he planned to retire. But the lack of people moving to Mansfield has frustrated his plan. Most prospective buyers living around Mansfield can not proceed with their house purchase plans because they could not sell their own houses.
Like what housing analysts have been witnessing across the country, the professor and the prospective buyers have been caught in the swirl of rapidly growing foreclosure listings. Don Mitchell, director of Mansfield-Richland County Fair Housing, said foreclosure listings have not only pushed down home prices, they also have left homes and yards in disrepair, further pushing down home prices.
Since Hunt was unable to sell his Mansfield house after he bought a new house, he has had to struggle month after month to pay two monthly amortizations. This week, after more than two years of waiting and competing with foreclosure listings, his agent told him he has found a buyer. But Hunt may have to throw out any thought of gains from the house he maintained for more than seven years. His agent says the buyer is willing to shell out only around $125,000 for his house, more than $40,000 below his original listing price.